Epstein indeed has a long list of complaints about the falling off of moral and intellectual seriousness among university presidents. To which UD once again has to say: What a bald-faced hypocrite.
The university president who conferred Epstein’s one honorary degree – his crony, Peter Diamandopoulos of Adelphi University – was little more than a thief, who was made to reimburse the university for at least some of the money and perks to which he helped himself.
The sole university president in the country who considered Joseph Epstein worthy of an honorary degree was so corrupt that his tenure at Adelphi has a whole book about corruption devoted to it: SUNY Buffalo sociologist Lionel Lewis wrote, a few years after the ignominious fall of this greedy, amoral man, When Power Corrupts: Academic Governing Boards in the Shadow of the Adelphi Case.
If Epstein had a bit of decency, he’d return – or at least repudiate – this heavily soiled honor.
So by all means let us be lectured on university ethics by Diamandopoulos’s boy!